''It's interesting to see what happens to the body on psychedelics,'' someone is saying. "The perceptions of it. Some of it can be quite alien-looking. Some of it's very fluffy and soft and wonderful. Sort of gives you some hints of what the physical evolution of the body is going to be like.''
''And the senses. Especially hearing and sound,'' adds Sarah, looking deep into the eyes of one of her admirers. She's this Factory's Edie Sedgewick except with a shrewd mind and a caring soul. "Think if, instead of developing TV, we had taken sound reproduction into art. It would have created a different society.'' No one picks up on the idea, but Sarah has nothing to worry about. A huge spread on her music is already slated for the next issue.
Sirius sits down next to Sarah, and her admirers back off a little. Kirn watches the couple interact, silently gauging their level of intimacy. Perhaps Sirius is only a cyber Warhol, after all. Sarah might be his art project more than his lover. Meanwhile, others wait for Sirius to direct the conversation. Is he in the mood to hear ideas? How was Toon Town? Did he think of the theme for the next issue?
Journalist-turned-starmaker R.U. Sirius is the head ''head'' at Mondo, and he serves as the arbiter of memes to his growing clan. It is Sirius who finally decides if a meme is worth printing, and his ability to stay removed from "the movement'' gives him the humorist's-eye view of a world in which he does not fully participate, yet absolutely epitomizes. Having made it through the 1960s with his mind intact, Sirius shows amazing tolerance for the eager beavers and fist wavers who come through the Mondo house every day. In some ways the truest cyberian of all, ''R.U. Sirius'' asks just that question to everyone and everything that presents itself to him. His smirkishly psychedelic "wink wink'' tone makes him impervious to calamity. His ''no agenda'' policy infuriates some, but it coats the memes in his glossy magazine with an unthreatening candy shell. Hell, some of the strongest acid in the sixties came on Mickey Mouse blotter.
Sirius sits in a rocker and smiles in silence awhile. He knows these people are his willing subjects – not as peasants to king, but as audio samples to a house musician. As Sirius said earlier that day, ''I like to accumulate weird people around me. I'm sort of a cut-and-paste artist.'' He waits for someone to provide a few bites.
''We were talking about the end of time,'' one of the performance artists finally says. "About who will make it and who won't.''
''Through the great attractor at the end of time, she means,'' continues another. "Into the next dimension.''
''Only paying Mondo 2000 subscribers will make it into hyperspace,'' Sirius snickers, "and, of course, underpaid contributors.''
Everyone laughs. The mock implication is that they will be rewarded in the next dimension for their hard work and dedication to Mondo now – especially writers who don't ask for too much money. Sirius puts on a more genuinely serious tone, maybe for the benefit of Kirn, who still jots occasional notes into his reporter's notebook. This is media talking about metamedia to other media.
''I'm not sure how this is all going to come to pass, really.'' Sirius says slowly, so that Kirn's pen can keep up with his him. "Whether all of humanity will pop through as a huge group, or as just a small part, is hard to speculate. I don't think it'll be rich, dried-up Republican white men who come through it in the end. It's more likely to be people who can cope with personal technologies, and who do it in their garages. You have to have your own DNA lab in your basement.''
''I've got this theory about New Age people and television.'' Jas sits up in his chair, gearing up for a pitch. The relaxed setting in no way minimizes the personal and professional stakes. To them, this is an editorial meeting.
''New Age people are very much like the Mondo or the psychedelic people are – they just go outdoors and camping because they are scared of technology. That's because growing up in the sixties, parents would take TV time away as a punishment. Plus, TV became an electronic babysitter, and took on an authoritarian role. And I think a certain amount of TV had to be watched at the time in order to get the full mutation necessary to become one of us. They didn't get enough, so they became New Age people with mild phobias towards technology.''
There's a pause. Most eyes in the room turn to Sirius for his judgment on the theory, which could range anywhere from a sigh to an editorial assignment. Would the idea become a new philosophical virus?
''Hmmph. Could be ...'' He smiles. Nothing more.
Jas goes downstairs, covering the fact that he feels defeated. Someone lights a bowl. Queen Mu serves more coffee. The guy in the kitchen has passed out. Someone pops in a videocassette. Walter, wondering now what he liked about Sarah, checks his watch. Somehow, it's hard to imagine this gathering as our century's equivalent of the troubadours. (Queen Mu later informed me that the magazine actually conducted its business in a much more conventional and businesslike fashion than I was exposed to in my limited time with RU Sirius's crowd.)
But maybe this is the real Cyberia. It's not tackling complex computer problems, absorbing new psychedelic substances, or living through designer shamanic journeys. It's not learning the terminology of media viruses, chaos math, or house music. It's figuring out how two people can sell smart drugs in the same town without driving each other crazy. It's learning how to match the intentions of Silicon Valley's most prosperous corporations with the values of the psychedelics users who've made them that way. It's turning a nightclub into the modern equivalent of a Mayan temple without getting busted by the police. It's checking your bank statement to see if your ATM has been cracked, and figuring out how to punish the kid who did it without turning him into a hardened criminal. It's not getting too annoyed by the agendas of people who say they have none, or the inane, empty platitudes of those who say they do. It's learning to package the truth about our culture into media-friendly, bite-size pieces, and then finding an editor willing to put them in print because they strike him as amusing.
Coping in Cyberia means using our currently limited human language, bodies, emotions, and social realities to usher in something that's supposed to be free of those limitations. Things like virtual reality, Smart Bars, hypertext, the WELL, role-playing games, DMT, Ecstasy, house, fractals, sampling, anti-Muzak, technoshamanism, ecoterrorism, morphogenesis, video cyborgs, Toon Town, and Mondo 2000 are what slowly pull our society – even our world – past the event horizon of the great attractor at the end of time. But just like these, the next earth-shattering meme to hit the newsstands or computer nets may be the result of a failed relationship, a drug bust, an abortion on acid, or even a piss over the side of the porch.
Cyberia is frightening to everyone. Not just to technophobes, rich businessmen, midwestern farmers and suburban housewives, but, most of all, to the boys and girls hoping to ride the crest of the informational wave.
Surf's up.
Bulletins from the trenches
Death in the Center Ring
Timothy Leary's Ultimate Trip 08/1996
"That's probably the worst place in the house to leave those," Tim barks at a beautiful young assistant as she clears a pile of videocassettes from the path of his oncoming electric wheelchair. Then he stops short. "What are they, anyway?"